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Pharisaism Then & Now
By jason | December 27, 2007
I’m trying to work my way through NT Wright’s The New Testament and The People of God. It’s a huge book with a lot of great material, Wright’s chapter on Critical Realism is a great treatment of the issue.
I just finished a chapter dealing with different facets to the growth of diversity in Judaism during the 2nd Temple Period. I came a cross a quote related to the focus and agenda of the Pharisees that seems to have some modern day analogues.
…faced with social, political and cultural ‘pollution’ at the level of national life as a whole, one natural reaction (with a strong sense of ‘natural’) was to concentrate on personal cleanness, to cleanse and purify an area over which one did have control as a compensation for the impossibility of cleansing or purifying an area - outward and visible political one - over which one had none. (187)
What do you think? See similarities today?
Topics: Quotes, The Scriptures |
December 27th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Man, i need to pick that book back up again after selectively reading through about half of it and putting it down for his big Jesus book. I have similar feelings when reading most historical research on the first century- those folks sure were a lot like us. The political and religious groups were segregated in a way that appears vastly different on the surface, but the underlying issues and reactions were strikingly similar.
December 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
It is very similar and very sad. I am new to your site, but I have enjoyed thumbing through past entries, I really like the post on Driscoll-blended worship. Keep up the good work! I might add this to my favorites!
Yogi
(This doesn’t happen to be Jason Allen???)
December 28th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
There are a lot of Jason Allen’s out there but yes that’s my name.
Do we know each other?
December 29th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I knew a J.Allen from Mobile AL, who was on staff at Dauphine Way BC. He went to Southern Sem. and last I heard he was working with Dr. Albert M.
I was just wondering if you were him, I was freinds with him and we lost touch, I miss him but I guess he has moved on to bigger and better…
Thanks anyway!
Yogi
December 30th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Good insight from NT. I keep telling myself I’m going to pick the book up one of these days. Talk about being a little behind the eight ball.
It’s interesting how something like purity–which at its core is meant to imply “set-apartness” for God–can become a means by which we as religious people try to set up ourselves as God.
At an individual level I totally fall into a pattern of trying to exert control over my individual world and in a sense provide justification for it by “purifying” certain elements. Taking such actions, or making such resolutions to do so at least (it is, after all, New Years), makes me feel as though I’m creating the proper climate for God.
Hearing yet another leader talk today about the rampant danger of post-modernism and its thoroughgoing commitment to relativity in the areas of morals reminded me of how on a corporate level we as religious people can try to demonize and set ourselves apart from our culture in order to create, again, the proper climate in which God can act.
BTW: Love the new site. Guess I’m going to have to do double duty now with my reading now.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Yogi,
I’ve read you comments and I have a question or two for you. Contact me at tj@trinitychurchbrighton.com.